Industrial Assessment Center Program Research Articles

Creating linked datasets for SME energy-assessment evidence-building: Results from the U.S. Industrial Assessment Center Program

Lack of information is commonly cited as a market failure resulting in an energy-efficiency gap. Government information policies to fill this gap may enable improvements in energy efficiency and social welfare because of the externalities of energy use. The U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) program is one such policy intervention, providing no-cost assessments to small and medium enterprises (SME). The IAC program has assembled a wealth of data on these assessments, but the database does not include information about participants after the assessment or on non-participants. This study addresses that lack by creating a new linked dataset using the public IAC and non-public data at the Census Bureau. The IAC database excludes detail needed for an exact match, so the study developed a linking methodology to account for uncertainty in the matching process. Based on the linking approach, a difference in difference analysis for SME that received an assessment was done; plants that received an assessment improve their performance over time, relative to industry peers that did not. This new linked dataset is likely to shed even more light on the impact of the IAC and similar programs in advancing energy efficiency.

Top Management Involvement in the Adoption of Energy Efficiency Projects

This paper investigates the role of top management in the adoption of energy-efficiency initiatives. We study data from 175 energy efficiency assessments done by San Diego State University (SDSU) during 2000-2008 as part of the Department of Energy’s Industrial Assessment Center Program. We find that top management involvement leads to firms adopting 30% more of the savings identified in an assessment. We also find that when top management is involved, the average payback of adopted proposals is 57.7% longer. When top managers do reject a recommendation, they are more likely to cite operational barriers, as opposed to economic or organizational ones, than other employees are. Altogether, this suggests that top managers perceive less resource constraints than other managers do and adopt a longer perspective on energy efficiency investments. Overall, our findings shed new light on how top management involvement influences the adoption of process innovations.

Impacts of the Save Energy Now (SEN) Program

ABSTRACT The need for energy efficiency captured the attention of all sectors of our society in the 1970s when energy supplies dwindled and prices increased. Interest in energy efficiency continued during the 1980s primarily due to environmental concerns, and secondarily because of economic and industrial competitiveness issues. Energy supply disruptions caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and recent hikes in energy prices, have generated a renewed interest in energy efficiency. In the past, the industrial sector has responded to energy shortages and its price increases with varying effectiveness, but small and medium-sized plants generally lacked the resources to cope effectively. One of the U. S. government's responses to this situation was to offer these small and medium-sized plants technical assistance, such as the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) program. The IAC Program has been successfully functioning during the past three decades. However, large energy users (LEUs) were not included in this...

Industrial energy efficiency decision making

This paper presents a model to describe an industrial firm's energy efficiency decision making over time. The model posits seven stages, which range from no energy savings decision making to energy efficiency program implementation to steady state energy efficiency decision making. It is hypothesized that government energy-efficiency programs, such as the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) Program funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), can accelerate the speed industrial firms move through the model's seven stages. Data were collected about firms’ stages in the model before and after receiving one of the three IAC benefits: a direct energy assessment; the employ of a student alumnus of the IAC Program; or use of energy efficiency information from an IAC website. It was found that each IAC benefit is associated with a significant positive change in firms’ energy efficiency decision making within a relatively short period of time.

A Self-Assessment Software Application for Industrial Manufacturers

This article discusses a software program that was developed at the University of Maine to assist manufacturers in minimizing waste and improving energy efficiency. The software combined the most common recommendations made in the US Department of Energy`s Industrial Assessment Center program in a user-friendly package that can be used by computer novices. It also includes ``wizards`` that serve as an expert system to lead the user through an assessment of their total facility. The program is interactive and based around the Windows 95 operating system. Once users enter the necessary data into the program, it will generate a report similar to those created by Industrial Assessment Centers. General code information will be covered with a discussion of some of the recommendations that are included.